July third, then, found Gabriel at Rochester, now seventy-five or
eighty miles from Niagara Falls, his goal, where--he had already
heard--ground was being actually broken for the huge new power plant of
which he alone, of all outsiders, understood the meaning. Gabriel
counted on spending the Fourth at Rochester where a Socialist picnic and
celebration had been arranged. Ordinarily, he would have taken part in
the work and volunteered as a speaker, but now, anxious to keep out of
sight, he counted merely on forming one of the crowd. There could be
little danger, thought he, in such a mass. Despite the recent stringent
censorship and military rule of the district by the new Mounted Police,
a huge gathering was expected. The big railway and lake-traffic strikes,
both recently lost, had produced keen resentment, and, as political and
economic power had been narrowed here, as all over the country, in these
last few months of on-sweeping capitalist domination, the Socialist
movement had been growing ever more and more swiftly.
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